Chapter Eighteen
Haide
Creed paces like he’s trying to wear a trench in the floor.
It’s weird. The Creed I have had the utmost displeasure of knowing doesn’t match the one I came back to find.
The old Creed was the calm one—or as calm as a Devereaux brother can be. He’s calculating, sure. The kind of guy who stands, uncaring, while the realm burns around him because he already knows how the story ends and is just waiting for the inevitable.
Now—he’s anxious, which is deeply fucking disturbing, even for me.
I lean back against the stone ledge. “You’re getting on my nerves and it’s making me uncomfortable.”
He pauses mid-step, glancing over his shoulder, confusion plain on his face. “Why?”
I snort. “You’re the reasonable one. If you start acting strange, I have to start questioning everything. And I’m already questioning everything. So enough, bratty king.”
His mouth twitches. “Still the same.”
“Unfortunately for the realm. And world.”
He turns then, really looking at me, and something shifts in his expression. The tension bleeds out of his shoulders and a strange sort of softness takes over.
“Just out with it, big guy. You asked me to come down to your little hidden fortress.” I open my arms. “I’m here and—at this very moment—I don’t want to kill you for what you did. But that could change quickly, if my track record proves anything. Get on with it already and tell me what’s going on.”
Creed exhales slowly. “I tried to tell you before.” His voice drops, almost careful. “But I owe you more than an apology, Haide.”
That gets my attention.
I tilt my head, watching him the way I would a snake. “Well, this sounds promising.”
He picks up one of the books off the table. “I should’ve trusted myself more,” he continues. “Instead of panicking, but when it comes to my brothers it’s hard not to go straight for defensive.”
That I understand.
I shrug one shoulder, leaning my hip against the table. “I get it. I live in defensive mode. Prefer it, honestly.”
Creed smiles then, a gentle curve of his lips and that’s somehow worse than if he smirked. “But you shouldn’t have to,” he says quietly.
The words dig somewhere uncomfortable in my chest. I wave a hand between us. “Okay. Nope. Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Whatever this is.” I gesture vaguely at him.
“The sincerity. The guilt. The emotional growth, or whatever. It’s very off-brand for you, and I am emotionally stunted; so that shit is like getting hit in the head with a tree branch—worse than those little zappy magic blasts from that stupid combat class you made me take. ”
A low chuckle escapes him as he sets the book on the table and slides it toward me.
I stare down at the old, dusty thing. The leather is dark and cracked, the edges of the pages uneven like they were cut by hand centuries ago.
My nose wrinkles. “That thing smells like it killed someone.”
Creed folds his arms. “Not long ago I would have told you that was impossible.”
“And now?”
“Now, I know I was too closed-minded.”
I run my fingers along the cover, brushing dust aside to reveal the title more clearly.
Lore of the Dragon, Protectors of Rathe.
“You’ve been digging through those archives a while, I heard,” I mutter. “If this is you being a dick and proving dragons secretly love Argents, I’m going to set it on fire. As you’ve seen, I can do that now.”
“So I have, and while I am dying to see more”—his brow lifts—“that would be unfortunate in this case.”
“Oh?”
“Haide.” His expression turns strangely serious again. “I fucked up terribly and my mistake is mine to fix. But in trying to right the wrongs I’ve made, I found something I wasn’t looking for,” he says quietly. “I should probably be on my knees in front of you.”
My brows shoot up. “Well, now I’m interested.”
He gestures toward the book again. “Open it.”
I flip it open.
Cramped writing and symbols litter the pages. The contents look older than anything I’ve ever seen on the island. Ink faded in some places, darker in others where someone clearly went back over the lines like they wanted to make damn sure the words survived.
My attention is drawn to the image on the lower half of the page.
An outline of a woman’s hand, and the curved head of a hatchling dragon pressing against her palm. Its snout leans into her skin, wings folded tight against its small body while larger shadows circle above them in looping shapes that look less like beasts and more like guardians marking a sky.
Carved beneath the image is a single title, replicated again and again between the curling sigils.
Drakaryth. The voice of the guardians, crown of the sky, and bearer of the first flame.
My brows pull and I lean a little closer. That name.
I’ve heard it before. That’s what Thyrix called me the day he first slipped into my head.
“What the hell is this?” I breathe, a strange heat building along my temples.
Creed’s expression is tender in a way that doesn’t belong on his face. “What do you know of the first flame, Haide?”
“What the fuck is a first flame?”
“Turn the page.”
My stomach hits the floor. “No.”
He rounds the table, coming to stand behind me. His hand covers mine and he flips the page, though his touch lingers longer than necessary.
My entire body locks tight as I stare at the pictures below.
The first flame.
“Dark as the soil that leaves their souls unseen,” Creed reads quietly. “The first flame is the sacred fire of the fates, the eternal ember carried from the dawn of dragon kind.”
My body seems to lean closer on its own, pulse pounding harder by the second.
“As the first beasts to walk our realm, Dragons became the guardians of all magical beings. They rise and fall in honor, but the fallen are never lost to the sky,” he murmurs, and my fingers shoot up, sliding along the words as he speaks them aloud.
“When a dragon falls, its soul is sealed into stone and buried deep within the soil. And so, its power does not fade from the realm, and is only discoverable by the Drakaryth herself.”
My pulse stutters.
Buried in the soil.
My gaze jumps down the page, to the drawing beneath the last script—stones scattered beneath the arch of a cavern, protected by rock walls and twisted roots.
Holy shit, it can’t be…
Creed keeps reading. “It returns its gift to the giver in honor, proud to be bound to the Drakaryth, and in turn, feeding the fire. With every fallen guardian, the bearer of the first flame grows stronger, carrying the will and power of every beast who came before.”
Creed trails off as we get to the last word and I feel him shift behind me. When I glance back, his eyes are on my temple. There’s a brief touch of—heat—a spark—but it’s not in pain. He’s not trying to dig inside my head. It’s something else.
“Turn the page, brat,” he says quietly, finally moving away to circle the table to stand at the opposite side.
My fingers start to shake, annoyance weighing my brows down. I’m not this anxious girl.
I flip the page, landing on a wild palette of colors.
The art from the page before did it no justice, and now I see what I can’t deny.
The cavern from the island, just as it was my entire life. The thick rooted soil glowing in patches, ruby red gleaming every few feet, the Isles Kiss blooming all around.
“The forbidden gems,” I breathe, a strange tingle working its way down my spine. “They’re not treasure; they’re…souls.”
“Yes.”
“And the Isles Kiss. It’s not poison at all, is it?” I look up at him. “It’s a shield.”
“It protects the magic, preserving it. That’s why the flower itself eats the souls of those who come too close. The soul stones—as the text calls them—are meant for one gifted and one gifted only.”
“This Drakaryth.”
Creed nods. “Yes, the wielder of the first flame.”
I shake my head, confused. “But what does this have to do with me? Just ’cause they’re on the Island doesn’t mean I have more to tell you about them. Clearly, everything I thought I knew was wrong anyway.”
“One more page, Haide.”
I hold his gaze, my muscles going stiff.
I can’t seem to make myself turn another page. Yet, a gust of wind shoots through the space, and in my peripheral, I see the old paper float and fold over.
The air leaves my lungs like something just punched straight through my ribs.
The page is nothing like the ones before it.
It’s alive.
Color spills across the paper in a display of realism, as if I’m looking through a window.
Endless green stretches beneath a wide sky, bright and impossibly blue, clouds drifting lazily overhead like the world itself has never known war.
At least not yet. Mountains rise in the distance, sharp and ancient, and through the center of it all: a woman.
She stands, suspended above the earth as if gravity doesn’t even fucking exist or if it does, it would never dare touch her.
Her hair whips behind her in a wild storm of dark strands, long and untamed, dancing through the wind like a living shadow. The air around her bends, twisting with power that rolls outward in visible waves, bending the grass and trees beneath her feet.
My throat tightens. A flame spreads from her open palm.
Only it’s not just any flame. There are no red or blue hues, no golden orange blaze like the kiss of a dragon’s tongue.
It’s black. The fire spills upward like liquid night, curling and twisting as it climbs into the galaxy, devouring the light around it. The edges ripple with dark onyx, fierce and booming in a way that makes my skin prickle.
The first flame.
Something sweeps through me all at once: memories, sensations, flashes of heat behind my temples. The strange pull I’ve felt every time a dragon circled overhead, every time the sky seemed to breathe with me instead of against me.
The cavern.
The gems.
The dragons.
The fire.
It all slams together in one vicious weight.
My fingers tighten against the page.
Slowly, I lift my head.
Creed is already watching me. A slow smirk pulls across his mouth like he’s been waiting for this exact moment.